How to format your references using the Traffic citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Traffic. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author
1.
Kavanaugh MP. Accessing a transporter structure. Nature 2004;431:752–753.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Wrachtrup J, Finkler A. Applied physics: Hybrid sensors ring the changes. Nature 2014;512:380–381.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Marhas KK, Goswami JN, Davis AM. Short-lived nuclides in hibonite grains from Murchison: evidence for solar system evolution. Science 2002;298:2182–2185.
A journal article with 99 or more authors
1.
Yu J, Xie Z, Kang H, Li Z, Sun C, Bian L, Zhang P. High variability of atmospheric mercury in the summertime boundary layer through the central Arctic Ocean. Sci Rep 2014;4:6091.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book
1.
Birke D. Social Networks and their Economics. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2013.
An edited book
1.
Torelli N, Pesarin F, Bar-Hen A, editors. Advances in Theoretical and Applied Statistics. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Sharp DN. Economic Violence in the Practice of African Truth Commissions and Beyond. In: Sharp DN, editor. Justice and Economic Violence in Transition. New York, NY: Springer; 2014. p. 79–107.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Traffic.

Blog post
1.
Carpineti A. Lonely Young Star Found In The “Middle Of Nowhere” [Internet]. IFLScience. 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30];Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/lonely-young-star-found-in-the-middle-of-nowhere/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report
1.
Government Accountability Office. Underinflated Tires in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2007.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Iwuagwu CI. Preventing the Spread of HIV Among Homeless Youth in California. 2017;

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article
1.
Philpott ML. Finding What I Need at the Mall. New York Times. 2017;SR10.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal titleTraffic
AbbreviationTraffic
ISSN (print)1398-9219
ISSN (online)1600-0854
ScopeBiochemistry
Cell Biology
Genetics
Molecular Biology
Structural Biology

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